Rape and murder of two teenagers in India sparks public anger

Japan Herald Friday 30th May, 2014

• Police arrest three suspects

• A police officer among the arrested

• Family of one of the victims alleges police complicity

NEW DELHI, India - Public anger, political controversy and media lashing gained momentum Friday over the alleged gang rape and murder of two teenage girls in an Indian village, posing one of the first challenges to the four-day-old government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Police arrested at least three men, including a police officer, on Friday, two days after the girls, aged 14 and 16, were found hanging from a tree in Uttar Pradesh, officials said, adding that they were looking for one more suspect and another policeman.

The alleged sexual crime incited angry passions against the government's perceived inaction as it also threatened caste based riots in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh plagued by high rate of crime.

The father of one of the girls alleged that the brothers and local police officers, all of whom are from the region's dominant caste, the Yadavs. He said they were involved the rape and murder of the girls. Indian law disallows identifying victims and their family.

The site of the murder turned into a media battleground on Friday with OB vans from India's robust TV news industry parked near the mango trees. Politicians from the region also visited the town.

The father, a 45-year-old agricultural laborer, said in a telephone interview that the two girls were last seen alive Tuesday evening in the mango orchard, in the company of a man named Pappu Yadav.

He said a relative saw the girls with Yadav and two of Yadav's brothers.

One of the Yadav brothers pulled out a pistol "and put it to the head of my cousin-brother", the father said, using a common term in India for a close relative. "He got scared and ran away."

He said that his relative went to the local police station and sought police's help in arresting Yadav and save the girls.

But the officers at the police station "took the side of the culpritthey abused and misbehaved with us."

The next morning, when the two girls were found dead, a crowd of angry villagers gathered at the scene, accusing the police of complicity in the crime. They blocked police from taking away the bodies. Calm was restored only after the police agreed to arrest the Yadav brothers and the police officer.

R.K.S. Rathore, a senior police officer, said: "This is a very serious and unfortunate incident. We are making all-out efforts to arrest the other two accused."

India's new federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh Friday sought report from the state government over the case as public anger and political controversy was fast gaining momentum.

The bodies of the two cousins were found hanging from mango trees in Katra Shadat Ganj, a village in the Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh.

Police said that autopsies confirmed that the girls had been raped and strangled to death.

The case has posed one of the first challenges for new Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.

Indian police is facing criticism over its alleged failure to curb sexual violence in India, where a string of high-profile rapes has sparked nationwide protests against deeply entrenched discrimination against women.

According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of reported rape cases in India surged nearly 900 percent in the past four decades to 24,923 in 2012.

But the problem may be worse as many of rape cases go unreported.